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Timberwolves fall in DC, 104-100; bloggers write haikus

Funny story, and no I didn’t lose another laptop adapter. Anyway, I got off of work at 6:00 figuring that I would miss only part of the first quarter, which wound up being true. But then I didn’t realize the Wild hijacked the main FSN channel and spent another 15 minutes flipping through the channels before I figured to check the internet. The internet, Derek…what took you so long to check what channel it was on there. However, that was not where my stupidity ended. No, then I couldn’t find FSN-plus even though I know that I had watched it before. So I’m sitting on my couch flipping through the channels looking for this phantom channel as the game rolled into the second quarter before I finally found it.

No worries, I was still able to follow the game on Twitter — and the Timberwolves were doing really well without me — but what is even wrong with me lately? I mean, I turned to go to the court at Target Center last Saturday when they were playing the Celtics and accidentally headed towards the lockerroom, prompting a security guard to ask if I was from Boston. No, I’m not; I’m just directionally-challenged. Then, to top things off I wound up leaving my adapter behind. Go Derek!

Anyway, the Timberwolves did much better without me. They roared out to an early lead behind a Kevin Love three point barrage early on and finished with 15 points. Sensing that I just tuned in to the game, decided to forgo important things like transition defense and exerting minimal effort for simply contesting shots. But they still managed to squeak out a 12-point lead at halftime. Love led the Timberwolves with 17 points and six rebounds despite scoring a single point in the second. For the Wizards, John Wall’s seven assists at halftime gave Nene 14 points.

Can I stop here?

*mutter* *mutter*

Please, do I have to?

*RABBLE* *RABBLE* RABBLE*

Fine, I’ll finish this, but I get to do whatever I want at the end.

*rabble*

Okay, so you remember the bad transition defense? Yeah, that continued, and as an added bonus, we got discombobulated spacing! Hooray– not. The same Timberwolves team that committed just three turnovers in the first 24 minutes of the game managed to commit two in the first half of the third quarter. Two may not seem like very many, but it is when the Wizards had 11 points off of the five Timberwolves turnovers at that point. There was even one play in transition where Ricky Rubio had Corey Brewer in his sights for what should have been an easy layup and Brewer over-ran Rubio or Rubio thought he was going to stop cutting, so he would up bouncing the ball out-of-bounds between two Wizards.

Yeah, it was that kind of night.

However, it wasn’t just the turnovers that would derail Minnesota’s plans for victory. The shot selection, as a part of the overall decision-making was just “off.” Rubio and Love would begin their two-man game, yet instead of making a move that favored his strengths, Rubio cut to the corner and jacked up a fadeaway long-two. Or the back-to-back-to-back quick three pointer possessions. Or Kevin Martin attempting a turnaround jumper from just inside the two point line. Whatever it was– the spacing, energy, or whatever — the Timberwolves struggled to create good shots because they could not get into a good offensive flow. As a result, the Timberwolves wound up tied with the Wizards after three, 81-81 after a 16-point quarter.

Much of the fourth was spent with the lead see-sawing back and forth. And that made for a close game near the end. With the Timberwolves down 97-95, Martin would hit a three to put them ahead by one with about a minute remaining. Coming out of the timeout with :48 seconds left, former Timberwolf, Martell Webster would have your eventual game-winner to put the Wizards up 100-98 and the Wizards never looked back from there.

Love finished with 25-11-4. Robbie Hummel added seven points on 2-3 shooting to go with six rebounds. For the Wizards, Wall led the way with an impressive 14 point, five rebound and 16 assist game. Max player? Yeah, I think so.

Now, time for haikus! No, really…this is happening. Instead of getting up in arms over a sloppy loss in mid-November, William Bohl (@BreakTheHuddle) of A Wolf Among Wolves and Tim Faklis of Canis Hoopus and I decided to start tweeting postgame haikus. Here is what happened:

And with that clunker out of the way, the Timberwolves play the Clippers tomorrow night at home. If this sounds familiar this is the second time this month that the Timberwolves are lucky enough to draw one of the Western Conference’s best teams on the second night of a back-to-back.

About Derek James

In addition to writing for Howlin' T-Wolf, Derek James writes about basketball Hardwood Paroxysm in the ESPN TrueHoop Network and covers the Charlotte Bobcats for SB Nation’s Rufus on Fire. Andray Blatche and Isaiah Rider follow him on Twitter.